CEPF Investment Strategy & Program Focus 

Stimulate landscape management initiatives led by civil society in Central and Serra do Mar Corridors

CEPF has the opportunity to complement the objectives of the Pilot Program (PPG-7) of the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment for the Central Corridor by focusing on biodiversity corridors. This program is an innovative multisectoral and multidisciplinary partnership involving universities, NGOs, federal and state environmental agencies, and forest policymakers in the states of Bahia and Espírito Santo.

CEPF will support projects that consider spatial relationships in land use, local biodiversity, and the dynamics of forest fragments within a corridor context. Investments will also be made in nested levels of actions ranging from microcorridors to larger-scale approaches. To maintain or restore connections across the landscape, however, it will also be necessary to stimulate the creation of new protected areas, the introduction of low-impact land use plans, and the recuperation of degraded forests in key sites. Possible activities addressing this larger theme include support for projects that focus on low-impact land uses such as ecotourism; enforcement and monitoring; economic incentives that contribute to biodiversity conservation; institutional capacity-building; and environmental education. Proponents should demonstrate how such activities will secure habitat in the most appropriate places for Threatened, endemic, and key species, and how they will guarantee protection over the long term.

CEPF should support technically sound efforts to restore degraded areas where such efforts will increase viability and forest cover and reconnect fragmented habitats to provide maximum support for biodiversity. This will be achieved predominantly through efforts to disseminate and increase technical knowledge of cost-effective and innovative tools for reforestation. The viability of reforestation efforts requires not only low-cost and technically sound approaches, but also the interest and participation of the local community. It is therefore crucial to raise awareness of technically advanced restoration methods among key stakeholders.

CEPF should support projects focusing on levels of fauna and flora exchange in areas with different degrees of connection and forest cover; the status of flora and fauna species; and identify appropriate landscape management activities for their conservation.

Within the broader corridor concept, CEPF will also support projects that protect aquatic habitats. Frequently, programs to conserve terrestrial environments do not include plans to conserve aquatic systems. In general, aquatic habitats have been drastically affected by human impact - for example, eutrophication, silting, pollution, over-exploitation, and degradation of gallery forests. Due to increasingly intensive land use and resulting pollution, protection of aquatic systems is a major priority in both the Central and Serra do Mar corridors. CEPF can play an important role by supporting the development of the plans to protect aquatic habitats and to implement watershed management plans. Such management imperatives are directly related to the conservation of forest environments in both proposed corridors.

Weak technical capacity in some key areas has impeded conservation mechanisms in the Atlantic Forest. The CEPF strategy will enhance regional technical capacities of NGOs and other stakeholders in conservation and resource management. Training programs, courses, and other educational activities will be supported in order to develop and implement effective strategies to protect biodiversity, resulting in a critical mass of conservation science professionals.

A recent study revealed pervasive ignorance of biodiversity issues in the Atlantic Forest despite the region's high species richness and endemism. Awareness programs are needed to build local pride in the regions many backyard endemic species (through the "nowhere else on Earth" approach), to foster greater community commitment to these species and their habitats. Such programs can also train local people to help evaluate and monitor flagship species, leading to the selection of new private reserves.

At the same time, the dissemination of information will be considered an integral component of all CEPF strategic directions. The exchange of information about new conservation techniques is essential to success in both corridors.

Improve management of existing and future public protected areas through targeted civil society efforts

A key "building block of conservation" in the Atlantic Forest is the system of public protected areas. However, it is necessary to support and expand the system through activities that secure additional baseline information on biodiversity and refine policies and guidelines.

The current strictly protected forests (national parks, biological reserves and ecological stations) are insufficient in number and area to conserve biodiversity in the Atlantic Forest and in the corridors. It is crucial to support and expand the system through activities that ensure the adequate management of these areas and their buffer zones.

The system of protected areas in the Atlantic Forest is fragile, due to the lack of capacity of government agencies to provide adequate management and protection. NGOs play an important role by helping federal and state governments incorporate conservation principles in their actions, and by providing technical and political support for new protected areas. This support can include compiling baseline information about local biodiversity and data to fill the gaps in environmental, economic, and social knowledge; mapping land cover and habitats; selecting indicators to monitor biodiversity; and identifying areas for official protection considering the biodiversity representation and viable habitats at the landscape scale.

CEPF will seek to catalyze innovative public/private alliances and partnerships led by civil society to improve and strengthen state agencies' and IBAMA's efforts to manage specific protected areas within the Central and Serra do Mar corridors.

CEPF will stimulate the creation, and support implementation, of new public protected areas within the two corridors and support activities that increase viability and forest cover in buffer zones of protected areas.

CEPF will also support studies evaluating the status of flora and fauna species and projects that support their conservation. The lack of information about Brazilian biodiversity makes most of the evaluations of extinction threats largely speculative. Current predictions of extinction trends are mostly based on projections of habitat loss rates and on relationships between species richness and habitat size. However, little or nothing is known about the populations of key species in the forest remnants within public protected areas or the long-term impact of neighboring urban areas on their survival.

Increase the number of private protected areas through civil society efforts

The challenges in establishing new public protected areas are daunting and time-consuming; therefore, the creation of RPPNs, which are officially recognized as part of the National System of Conservation Units, must be emphasized as an effective and relatively simple means of increasing the amount of habitat under protection. An RPPN is usually sited because of the importance of the area for biodiversity protection, its landscape value, and other environmental variables which need protection or restoration in order to maintain fragile or threatened ecosystems. They can therefore play a key role in complementing the existing system, providing increased connectivity as well as increase the representation of priority areas included in the protected areas network. The corridors currently have 63 RPPNs covering 13,000 hectares. Landowners have been organizing associations of private reserves in several states (Bahia, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo). It is recommended that CEPF participate, with other organizations, in the creation of an Action Plan to support the management of existing private protected areas and to create new ones. Landowners have made increasing requests for funds that support this specific purpose, and there has been little response from donors so far.

CEPF will also stimulate the use of economic incentives to increase land held in private protected areas. CEPF should contribute to ongoing efforts of local NGOs to increase compliance with regulations concerning "Legal Reserves" and "Areas of Permanent Preservation" by promoting environmental education projects; working with law enforcement to augment the effectiveness of legal protection; and developing economic instruments for conservation in order to protect biodiversity at a low opportunity cost to development.

Create an action fund to improve civil society identification and management of critical areas of habitat

NGOs can perform several simultaneous functions in resource management initiatives, providing stability and increasing the likelihood of success. The major obstacle to replication of successful projects in different regions is the small number of professional NGOs coupled with the intermittent nature of major funding sources.

As part of an Action Fund for Conservation, there should be a program of small-scale investment (with no individual grant greater than $10,000) in specific civil society efforts to strengthen local organizations to bring critical conservation areas under improved management. Such a program should be technically and financially administered by an accredited NGO within one of the two corridors. This effort would learn from the UNDP-GEF Small Grants Program currently operating in the Brazilian Cerrado.

The Atlantic Forest hotspot is acknowledged as an area of truly exceptional levels of biodiversity and yet under truly enormous levels of stress. Both these elements are, however, patchily distributed within the hotspot; thus for example the geographically relatively small sector in the northeast is acknowledged as being a distinct center of endemism and also of having the highest levels of deforestation, with only a few percent forest cover remaining. In the northeast, and indeed in some other areas outside the selected corridors, assemblages of highly restricted-range (often therefore Critically Endangered) species may be exposed to serious depletion and even extinction as a result of anthropogenic activities. Moreover, in these areas NGO and other civil society representation may be unusually weak. Accordingly, CEPF expects to deploy a small amount of funding to support initiatives to intercede on behalf of critical species in areas outside the selected hotspots, and to build local capacity in support of those initiatives.

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